Thoughts on preparing an exhibit ...

I have two one-person shows coming up. My first ever. So naturally there is a learning curve involved.

One is with editing my work. Both shows are editorial images, and as such, I'm putting a lot of thought into the flow of the show. Images should convey the story, revealing something about the topic.

The show I'm in the process of printing right now (another blog entry in it's own right!), is titled: "Children Raising Children: Living in the Wake of AIDS". It's comprised of a project I photographed with the cooperation of Ugandan NGO Action for Youth Development. I spent a few days observing and shooting a family of children in Rakai, the village where the first case of AIDS in Uganda was diagnosed in 1982. Thanks to an aggressive education campaign by the Ugandan government, the number of new cases has steadily declined in the past decade. However, in the aftermath, the number of orphans who not only lost their parents, but aunts, uncles, older siblings ... has steadily increased. There are many villages in areas like Rakai whose heads of households are either under the age of 18, or over the age of 70. The middle-aged and primary caregivers of the younger and older generations has been wiped out.

The primary family depicted in my images for the show was left without adult supervision when the oldest was twelve. They maintained their home, a brother worked odd jobs, another family in the village took in the youngest member who is also handicapped. Organizations like Action for Youth Development work to keep tabs on these families, encouraging continuation of education, family cohesion, and stepping in when mature guidance is needed.

Whew! Now to survey what my images convey. It's a daunting task. Do I choose an image because it happened to be an excellent portrait, or does that portrait look too, well, portrait like? How do all of my 'favorites' fit or flow?

Finally, what worked for me was creating an outline, just as I would for a research piece. I want a beginning and an ending. I want to convey various facets of their lives. One photo shows the casualness of children eating apples in the midst of the graves of their relatives, just past the house. That, I decided, would give a sense of 'place.' I chose that over unpeopled photos of the house itself, as I felt the children were needed to tell more of the story.

The story is about living in the wake, not in the throes of the disease itself. And I did find these children have a sense of hope and working for the future. To that end, I wanted to include photos of labor and of play, and particularly images that conveyed both at the same time.

In the end, I found images that were not necessarily my first pic for composition, lighting, focus actually filled gaps when my prized images did not. With an editorially-themed show, I think function sometimes wins over form.